Graphic, being usually called upon for pictures of the dainty graces and foibles, as well as of the sports, of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century and early Victorian society.
Thomson was much hampered by indifferent health, which, allied to his natural modesty, prevented him from mixing much with the world. His life was happy, with little incident, sweetened by the devoted attachment of a small circle who appreciated his worth and nobility of character. Extreme conscientiousness—he destroyed much of his work as soon as drawn—prevented him from making a competency, but a Civil List pension eased his lot in his declining years. He died at his home on Wandsworth Common, of heart disease, 7 May 1920. He married in 1884 Jessie Naismith, daughter of Peter Miller, of Ballynafeigh, Belfast, by whom he had one son.
[Life, by M. H. Spielmann (in preparation); private information; personal knowledge.]
TINWORTH, GEORGE (1843–1913), modeller, the fourth son of Joshua Tinworth, wheelwright, by his wife, Jane Daniel, of Woolwich, was born in Walworth 5 November 1843. He worked in his father's shop until he was twenty-four, spending his evenings first at the Lambeth School of Art (1861), and later at the Royal Academy Schools (1864). In 1867 he joined the pottery works of Messrs. Doulton, of Lambeth, and he remained with the firm until his death. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1866 until 1885. Three large terra-cotta panels shown there in 1874—‘Gethsemane’, ‘The Descent from the Cross’, and ‘The Foot of the Cross’—are now in the Edinburgh Museum. In 1875 a number of his small reliefs were highly praised by Ruskin in his Notes on the Royal Academy, vi, and, as a result, Tinworth was engaged by the architect George Edmund Street to collaborate with him in the large panel of the Crucifixion for the reredos of York Minster, and in the twenty-eight panels for the Guards' Chapel in St. James's Park. These reliefs, which led to the execution of many others of a similar type, show the artist at a level of achievement which he maintained in all his subsequent works. In 1883 an exhibition of his works, many of them very large and elaborate, was held in London at the Conduit Street Gallery.
Owing to the early influence of his mother, a strict dissenter, the majority of Tinworth's reliefs were scenes from Biblical history. Although conceived as reliefs the larger works were in reality groups of figures separately modelled and fired, and placed against a background, the borders of the panels being incised with descriptive quotations from the Bible. His work is full of realism and shows much technical skill, but it is the creation of a man who took no pains to remedy his early lack of education, and Tinworth cannot in any sense be considered a great artist. He executed a number of statues, among which are those of Henry Fawcett in Vauxhall Park, Charles Bradlaugh at Northampton, and Dr. Spurgeon in the Stockwell Orphanage; other large works by him are a sacred group in Whitworth Park, Manchester, panels in the pulpit and reredos of the English church, Copenhagen, a statue in St. Augustine's, Stepney, and a relief in the church of the Mediator, New York. All these are modelled: Tinworth made no pieces of actual sculpture.
Tinworth was awarded many foreign medals and prizes, and was made an officer of the French Academy in 1878. He married in 1881 Alice, third daughter of William Digweed; they had no children. He died in the train on his way from his home at Kew to the studio at Lambeth, 10 September 1913.
[E. W. Gosse, A Critical Essay on the Life and Works of George Tinworth, 1883; G. Tinworth, From Sunset to Sunset, 1908; private information.]
TRAILL, ANTHONY (1838–1914), provost of Trinity College, Dublin, was born 1 November 1838 at Ballylough, co. Antrim, the eldest son of William Traill, of Ballylough, by his wife, Louisa, daughter of Robert French, of Monivea Castle, co. Galway. His family, of Scottish origin, descended from Colonel James Traill, a soldier in the Cromwellian army, who settled in Ireland about the year 1660. Anthony Traill entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1856, was first scholar in mathematics in 1858, and graduated B.A. in 1860, winning first place among the moderators in mathematics and in experimental science. In 1865 he was elected to a fellowship, which he held until his appointment to the provostship in 1904.
A man of restless energy, Traill took a share in every department of college life. Although trained principally in applied mathematics, he took degrees both in medicine and in law. He was keenly interested in the fortunes of the school of physic, and in later life prided himself on
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